Creating New Movie Genres Through Music

Hey, so I'm going to do another one of these because I'm walking back from the grocery store right now and I spent the better part of today working on an idea that I had had for a while about rescoring a particular scene from [The] Bourne Ultimatum, I believe.

Some Context

I knew [the scene] was in the Bourne Identity series, but I wasn't sure which movie.

I had remembered that there was a scene where… it's a famous scene because it's a really amazingly done fight scene. The edit's incredible. The sound design's incredible. And the choreography's great… But I remember they, in some sort of video I watched about it a long time ago, they were saying how they had made a decision not to score it so that it could stand out more. And it definitely does. But I remembered that…

And another thing that I've brought up maybe in the past on the newsletter is the idea of genre and how genres of movies are very dependent on the music genre that's used in those genres.

For instance, the conspiracy style movies usually have a 70s funk kind of score because post-JFK assassination those kind of [movies] became a fascination. Those types of films, which are all essentially about that event. But yeah, because it was in the 70s, I guess there was just that style of funk popping up. And so you kind of had the noir jazz style mixed with that modern funk sound. Modern at the time.

And then for another genre like spaghetti westerns, those definitely have a specific style of music created by Morricone to have an Italian, Latin kind of sound with specific instrumentations, specific types of melodies, that kind of thing.

But it's pretty integral. The genre becomes the music.

So I've always been thinking, especially with all these reboots these days, let's make new genre films instead of rehashing old genres.

When is someone going to make a film that's so groundbreaking in genre that it becomes a thing that inspires so many more types of films? I'm really interested in that idea.

So because I'm interested in that idea and pushing film forward, and because I'm a composer, I'm thinking, well, what genres of music can we link with certain genres of film to really create something that feels like it's its own genre film? And [that] inspires a lot of work based on that.

One of the ideas I had was to do action or heist films. It'd be great to not just repeat the heist idea or the action film idea and have something very unique that's in that realm. And score it using a jungle/footwork type soundtrack. Also UK Garage. I'm kind of confused by all of those genres to be honest, and they all kind of blend into one another.

But I've been getting into those genres more lately, and wanting to make them. And I think I've always heard those and I think some scoring has been done in this realm but there's so many action movies that have these really reverb’d out drums that are really big and then maybe some high hats that are electronic, doing a jittering suspense. I'm thinking like National Treasure score, which is a good example.

So you have those, but you don't really have like a set music genre to go with that kind of genre movie and so I was thinking jungle would be an amazing counterpart.

Testing The Idea

So I wanted to kind of test it and explore it because I had remembered that this scene, which is such a good scene— I mean it's like the quintessential action fight scene in American blockbusters, at least— I'm sure there's tons better ones that are from kung fu movies and that kind of stuff.

But anyway, I was like let's try scoring it. So I went ahead and did that and some of you may have seen it. By now I've already posted it on online, but if you haven't seen it I'm gonna link it here on my YouTube and you can check it out:

But I also implore directors and other filmmakers who are into it: write something, make something in the genre and let me score it, because I that's kind of why I was making this, as well. It's because I think it's a really good pairing and I'm always trying to do different types of scores.

So I'm like, I want to score something with this genre. So, hey, it exists! It can be done and it's sick!

So that's kind of what the idea behind just doing this scene is and we'll see if there's any people that are also inspired by it and can see a greater vision with it, because I think it has a lot of potential.

I'm also interested in doing this with other genres, like I said. But this is the one that felt like there was a good example. Seeing the perfect scene that doesn't already have music, that already has great foley and stuff.

Yeah, that's about it on this one. Let me know if you like this scene and like the music and can picture anything new. Or also if other films have done something in this realm. I'm sure it has to have been done, but I just can't think of any off the top of my head. Especially ones that are really well-known blockbusters that have done it.

It'd be cool if we could make that happen somehow. Anyway, that's it.